She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant.
— from The Awakening, and Selected Short Stories by Kate Chopin

Venet.) declares, that under such a reign the fear of a massacre was groundless and absurd, especially in the emperor's absence, for his presence, according to the eloquent slave, might have given a sanction to the most bloody acts.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

The successor of Justinian yielded to the prayers of his unhappy subjects, and restored the liberty of divorce by mutual consent: the civilians were unanimous, the theologians were divided, and the ambiguous word, which contains the precept of Christ, is flexible to any interpretation that the wisdom of a legislator can demand.
— from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) by Edward Gibbon

This Singhalese form also, albeit now associated by Capuas with fatal disease, was probably at first, like the Mexican, a war goddess and god combined, as is shown by the uplifted sword, and reeking hand uplifted in triumph.
— from Demonology and Devil-lore by Moncure Daniel Conway

And in the morning they came to worship, and found me sitting up stiff and respectable on their previous god, just as they'd left me overnight.
— from The Country of the Blind, and Other Stories by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

By much tact and argument their objections were at last overcome for a time, and they very unwillingly set about raising the promised force of warriors.
— from Myths of the Cherokee Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology by James Mooney

O Willie was a witty wight, And had o' things an unco' sleight, Auld Reekie aye he keepit tight, And trig an' braw:
— from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns by Robert Burns

As we were slowly going back, both of us silent and rather low-spirited, an English dogcart, drawn by a thoroughbred horse, came up behind us and passed us rapidly.
— from Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant by Guy de Maupassant

After six years’ residence and unremitting search amid ruins, archives, inscriptions, traditions, and whatever could throw light upon this point, the author quitted Udaipur with all these doubts in his mind, for Saurashtra, to prosecute his inquiries in the pristine abodes of the race.
— from Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, v. 1 of 3 or the Central and Western Rajput States of India by James Tod

Unfortunately scarcely anything remains of the abundant literature of the Phoenicians,—for the Canaanites were a literary people before the invasion of Joshua; their language was Semitic, and almost identical with the Hebrew, although they were descendants of Ham; not only their light literature but their historical records have disappeared, and we have small knowledge of their kings or their great men.
— from In the Levant Twenty Fifth Impression by Charles Dudley Warner

It was an unset stone, a ruby.
— from Denounced: A Romance by John Bloundelle-Burton

Every church of the city lent its iron tongue to the peal; and now they joined and now rolled apart, now joined again and clanged like souls shrieking across the black gulfs of an earthquake; they swam aloft with mournful delirium, tumbled together, were scattered in spray, dissolved, renewed, died, as a last worn wave casts itself on an unfooted shore, and rang again as through rent doorways, became a clamorous host, an iron body, a pressure as of a down-drawn firmament, and once more a hollow vast, as if the abysses of the Circles were sounded through and through.
— from Vittoria — Volume 6 by George Meredith

A little village, Bâ Dibbeh, stood at the head of the pass, and before us stretched a rolling, thickly wooded country.
— from Amurath to Amurath by Gertrude Lowthian Bell

Looking beneath the unfortunate sectionalism, which was to retard the growth of the Union for the coming half-century, one sees that the people faced a new question: had the United States a right to place an anti-slavery restriction on a sovereign State at the time of creating it from a Territory?
— from The United States of America, Part 1: 1783-1830 by Edwin Erle Sparks

Then the tangi coming down kicked up such a row that we couldn’t hear ourselves speak, let alone hear the other shot.
— from The Ruby Sword: A Romance of Baluchistan by Bertram Mitford

There were enclosures on both sides the road; no convenient place to give us shade and rest.
— from Tent life with English Gipsies in Norway by Hubert (Solicitor) Smith

The joke provoked much merriment in the crowd, until silence again reigned.
— from The Fourth Estate, vol. 1 by Armando Palacio Valdés